i(ce)-Tunes: Sweden's incredible ice orchestra

They're among the rarest instruments in the world, but they'll be discarded come spring.

They're so fragile even the players' breath risks nudging them out of tune.

Turn up the temperature in the concert hall and you'd have, not a finely chiseled viola, flute or conga, but a glass of water.

"And you'd be healthier for drinking it!" says Tim Linhart, ice-instrument maker extraordinaire to an orchestra playing a series of concerts throughout the winter in the remote Swedish town of Luleå, just beneath the Arctic Circle.

Hearing is believing

Hearing really is believing when it comes to these evanescent instruments made -- bar the strings and other odd parts of metal or wood -- entirely from frozen water.

Linhart has held ice concerts not only in Sweden over the past 15 years but also in far-flung locations from Beaver Creek, Colorado, to the Italian alps.

His main problem, he says, in attracting a greater audience to the genre is people's incredulity that an ice instrument could make more than the most rudimentary sound.

A recording of an ice violinist busking a solo classical piece outside Luleå's House of Culture in around -10 C is evidence to the contrary.

The sound is sharp and ethereal, with a wide tonal range.

Not only classical

But the ice repertoire doesn't include only refined, classical pieces.

Along with the violins and a viola, cellos and a bass, there's an ice banjo in this year's lineup to accent country and bluegrass numbers.

Six- and 12-string guitars suit rock 'n' roll, and an ice xylophone resting on bicycle inner tubes -- to aid its resonance -- works across the genres.